What was used before APIs became the standard?

Question

I’m not in the IT sector but I’m beginning to understand the logic behind sending requests and receiving responses for various reasons. What was used before APIs became the standard for communication between systems?

Edit: I understand now that I’ve been in fact asking about REST API.

In: Technology

Answer 1

Way back, people used a thing called x.12 EDI and ftp to move data between systems. Things were processed in batches and transactional, they just took days or hours to turn around.